


One thing Ronon's tattoo doesn't mean

by Liviapenn



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Backstory, Chromatic Character, Episode Related, Episode: s02e05 Condemned, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-15
Updated: 2005-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liviapenn/pseuds/Liviapenn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a saying where Ronon comes from. It goes like this: 'They feed you well in the militia.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	One thing Ronon's tattoo doesn't mean

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Zeelee, Cesperanza, Prop and Jamjar for their thoughts.

1\. Innocent

*

The Low Court officer sitting across from Ronon is a bone-thin woman in an ill-fitting uniform. Their chairs and the table between them are bolted securely to the floor. Still she sits back in her chair, arms off the table, as if the edge on her side is an invisible wall. She can't be afraid of Ronon. His wrists are cuffed securely, the chain between the cuffs locked into the metal ring screwed into his side of the table. He supposes it's merely habit for her.

"Ronon Dex," she says, "the Arbiters have spoken." The words are ceremonial. They both know damn well no actual Arbiter ever heard a word of his case. He's just a worker, not a researcher or an engineer. Not important enough to attract the attention of the High Courts. "Fifteen years labor in the work camp at Karthia," says the Low Court officer, "or seven in the Sathidi special militia. Your choice."

Ronon had calculated the odds. Her words aren't unexpected. Still his hands tighten into fists, and for the first time he looks up to meet the court officer's eyes.

She looks puzzled for a moment, and then blinks. She does not move a millimeter towards him, but she does meet his gaze steadily. "If I were you, son, I'd take the work camp. You're young. You'll have plenty of years ahead when you get out."

What she doesn't have to say is that even if he dies in a mine, or gets crushed while clearing timber, it would still be an easier death than being taken by the Wraith.

There's a saying where Ronon comes from. It goes like this: 'They feed you well in the militia.' The implication is that there are worse damned things than being hungry. You could be in the militia, getting yourself a good education, training in weapons and technology. You could be getting a uniform, a bunk and three meals a day. Militia men even get paid, though they can't access the greater portion of the funds till after their term of service. Those who survive often go into the official Sathidi military, and do well for themselves there. Some even move on into politics, or weapons design.

It's hard for some offworlders to believe, but most militia men are volunteers. Sathidia only resorts to recruiting from the Low Courts when culling time draws near, because the militia is the first response when the darts come through the Ring. And even Ronon knows that the militia isn't really a defense. Just a distraction.

They do save lives; raising the alarm, slowing the approach of the darts so that safety measures can be taken in the cities. The militia takes heavy losses, twenty or thirty percent of their forces gone during even a casual raid. A real culling takes more like ninety-five percent, and their hunger isn't sated with the militia men. But the next real culling probably won't happen till Ronon's an old man.

The next small raid, though. There hasn't been a Wraith raid since Ronon was six years old, and Sathidia is due. There will be one within the next couple of years, sure as winter. When exactly, no one knows.

"Well?" The court officer is looking past him now, her voice hard and officious again. He's wasting her time.

He rubs his thumbs over the tops of his fists, and wastes a little more.

He thinks of the man from his old neighborhood, the one the kids called 'old man Arnax.' Broken-down Arnax, who was sentenced to ten years in a work camp at age eighteen, and came out looking fifty. He thinks about the last raid, the one when Ronon was six. Many were taken, and the university observatory and the downtown fourball stadium were both destroyed. A few of Ronon's distant cousins were among the culled, and one of the storytellers from the education center, what was her name? Miss Shakesh, or Akhesh... Ronon can't remember now.

She'd loved history, and she'd had a way of speaking about old warriors and scholars as if she had known them, of old kingdoms as though she had lived there. Ronon had almost believed that she *had* personally experienced all the things in her stories.

Ronon had known about death since he was old enough to walk, but somehow he had thought of her as an exception to that rule. He looks up at the scowling court officer.

"The militia," he says. Not because of Miss Shakthesh or his cousins or the stupid, scared people in this bright city. But because he's always known his fate, and it is not to spend his life in a mine, and it is not making bricks or clearing stumps. He has never put it into words, but Ronon has always known, somehow, that something about him is different. That he is *meant* for something different. This is not what he ever would have chosen, or planned, but it could be a first step up. A way out.

All he has to do is survive. It's only seven years.

They uncuff Ronon's hands from the table and take him back to the holding cell. It doesn't take too long before a truck arrives to pick him up, driven by a militia lieutenant. He snaps the chain of Ronon's cuffs to a link built into the truck's dashboard, and Ronon catches a glimpse of the militia tattoo on his throat. He has nine dots in three rows of three stacked next to the spine of a letter in the old Sathidi alphabet, the High Speech. The tattoo was originally to keep militia men from deserting, but Ronon's heard stories of men who inked their own necks with that symbol and pretended to be ex-militia, in order to run some scam or lay a woman. He's never personally known anyone who tried it, though. The automatic sentence for impersonating a militia man is compulsory militia service.

He spends the drive staring out the window, taking in the view. Once they reach base, his hands are cuffed behind his back, and he's led to a small white building where he undergoes a perfunctory medical exam. Afterward the lieutenant leads him down the hall into another room, bare except for a hard reclining chair. Another man waits inside for them, this one with six dots against the edge of his militia tattoo. A sergeant. He's holding a shining needle gun, and it buzzes brightly, cradled in his dark hands.

The chair is awkward, not built to accommodate a man with his arms cuffed behind his back. Ronon manages it himself, tilting his head back against the curve supporting his neck. The ceiling is gray and perfectly smooth.

"Another civic-minded Low Court recruit," the sergeant says, bending over the chair. "Why, I've had so much practice lately, I think I've just about figured out this tattoo business." The tattoo gun snarls, close to his neck. The sergeant means to make Ronon flinch, but Ronon just gives him a narrow stare. He studies Ronon, then glances up at the lieutenant. "Name?"

"Dex. Ronon Dex." The lieutenant answers for him. "Sixteen years old. Seven-year term."

"Hm," says the sergeant. Ronon is unable to stop a grimace as the man swabs his neck with disinfectant. It's cold. "And what are you in for, Dex?" He quickly sketches the base symbol on Ronon's throat, and Ronon stares up at the ceiling.

"Oh," he says. "Didn't they tell you. This is all a mistake. I'm innocent."

The sergeant smiles, but not unkindly. "Boy," he says, holding up the buzzing needle gun, "for the next ten minutes? Try not to make me laugh."


End file.
